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Friday, November 11, 2011

James Lewis Miller Family Reunion 2011

New Hope Church

﻿The James Lewis Miller Family Reunion was held on October 8, 2011 at New Hope, Florida. We had a great attendance this year and enjoyed beautiful weather.﻿﻿﻿

Mary Alice travelled from Iowa to join us for the second year in a row and it was wonderful to see her again. She has done so much hard work with keeping the family connected and announcing the reunion. Without her efforts I know we wouldn't have had such a great reunion this year. Thank you so much, Mary Alice.

This year Mary Alice arranged for us to have a banner that was hung at the picnic pavilion. Thank you to Ricky Rogers, son of Claudia Rogers, for providing us with the banner which can be adapted and used for many years to come. What a wonderful addition to our reunion!

Before dinner, we gathered in the church to conduct our "business". Something we haven't done in many years is to recognize certain individuals. This year we brought that back (thanks to Mary Alice again!) The recognition was as follows:

Family member who travelled the furtherest: Mary Alice Weadon Dias (daughter of Velma Miller) from Cedar Rapids IA.
Oldest family member: Henry Gus Carter 84 years old (husband of Margaret Carter)
Youngest family member: Gavin Hilburn (son of April Cantiberry; grandson of JL Cantiberry, 2 1/2 yrs old

During the business meeting Mary Alice showed us a wonderful slide show she put together of the family members we have lost during the last year. I will post those shortly and add them to our "Memorials" button at the top.

We also had a short discussion with some answers from Kelly about some of our history. I've designated Kelly as our Civil War family historian and look forward to his input for the blog.

One thing we didn't do was sing. I think that's one of the things I miss the most. One of my favorite memories is watching my grandfather (Warren Miller) lead the choir and singing those old hymn that are so familiar to me. Hopefully, we'll have a chance to do that next year.

After our business meeting we congregated outside for the dinner prayer and dug in!! We had
fried chicken, home made veggies, a mess of fried fish and hushpuppies and a plethora of desserts. If anybody went home hungry it was definitely their own fault! I believe our family has the best cooks in the country and I'm so glad they come to the reunion to feed our souls!!

Lots of fellowship and catchinig up with relatives followed our food fest. There are several family
members I didn't get a chance to visit with. I need to work on that next year.

I hope we can continue to grow our reunion and urge our younger relatives to attend in the years to come. They will soon come to realize what a wonderful family we have and the importance of keeping in touch.

Next year's reunion will be held on October 13, 2012. Hope to see you all again then!

3 comments:

It was certainly good to see you all at the reunion this year. I am sorry that I missed all those years. Yes I miss the singing, too. I remember Uncle Warren, Granddaddy(R.C.),Hughie, J.L.,Lloyd White, and others singing the mens part on "Rock of Ages, Hide me". Fern White or Linda Fay on the piano. It was wonderful. The Millers really loved singing. I miss the water keg and dipper that we had between the trees. The tree had to go when they improved the pavillion and put the concrete floor. I know the ladies miss that dirt floor and how their high heels used to sink down! Our parents and grand parents kept the Reunion alive. I beleive we should keep up their work. I love my family,kelly

Oh wow, what memories. I remember Uncle Warren leading the singing and Grandma Weadon (Zelma), Aunt Nita, Aunt Vee and all the rest of them sitting back in the choir area with their paper fans and singing away.

As a child, I was always a bit intimidated by Uncle Warren so I always sang along and if I didn't know the words...I would fake it. I didn't want to be called out onto the carpet! LOL